First Time

First time in space.  What were the first words spoken and the first experiences in orbit above the Earth? 

Transcript

Paula: 0:00

For the Best Aerospace Era this is mansplaining. Here is the host Anthony L. Sealey

0:10

Oh 900 hours. On April 12th, 1961, he sat over a hundred feet high on top of the most powerful rocket on earth. His heartbeat was at a calm 64 beats per minute. Just a few minutes later. at exactly oh 9 0 6 hours in 59.7 seconds. With a violent rumble of the rocket engines, his heart raced to 157 beats per minute. Ground personnel heard a yell from the comms. Let's go. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. There are a few moments in our history that exemplify what human ingenuity can truly achieve. Think of those who place the top stone. On top of the great pyramid of Giza, Think of the 18 survivors of the Magellan expedition that sailed around the world. Or think of the first dive in challenger deep, the deepest known depth of the ocean. Today we're going to cover one of these such pivotal moments in human history. The first launch of a human being in orbit above the earth. The man chosen for this moment. Yuriy Alekseyevich Gagarin. Now, what did he say? What did he see? How did it feel? How did he end up in a Vostok spacecraft on top of a Semyorka rocket? Let's get into that. Gagarin was a fighter pilot who flew the formidable MIG 15. One day, he was chosen to take part in a top secret program. In this top secret program, there were 20 who become known as Cosmonauts. This is in contrast to NASA who only selected seven astronauts. Unlike the Mercury seven, there was no press conference, no fanfare, no magazine covers for the 20 cosmonauts but only one of them could be chosen to attempt the first space flight. It was imperative for the cosmonauts to win the confidence of the prime administrator of the Soviet Space Program, the chief designer himself, Sergei Pavlovich Koralev, if you are familiar with the Mansplaneing podcast, then you should know who he is from prior episodes one of the 20 cosmonauts named Alexi Leonov recounted the group's first meeting with Korolev standing in front of the 20, the chief designer himself said, sit down my little Sokoliki. Sokoliki means Falcon in English. He began to look each of them up and down. Korolev had a list of names and reports from their training performances, but this was the first face-to-face meeting when he could talk to the cosmonauts himself. Leonov said, when Korolev got to Gagarin, you could see he liked Gagarin blue eyes, nice bright smile, a relaxed way of talking. He looked at him as if they were the only two in the room. Before Korolev left the meeting, Leonov, said. Korolev left said patriotism, courage, modesty, iron will knowledge and love of people. cosmonauts must have these qualities. Mind you, he did not say love of party or love of government. He was thinking of all mankind After he left the group, surrounded Gagarin and congratulated him and said he chose you. Gagarin made a good first impression with the ultimate authority Who could select the first to be the first man in space from this group of 20? Six were selected to move forward. In the first Vostok program, they were known as the Vanguard Six. Interestingly, these six were also the shortest in height among the 20. Alexi Leonov, who I mentioned before, was not selected because of his height. The Vostok spacecraft was very small. And every inch in height and every pound in weight needed to be accounted for. Ultimately, Gagarin was selected just four days before launch In the morning of April 12th, around oh five 30 in the morning. Gagarin was woken up. He went through his normal morning routine, even though nothing after would be normal for any other person who had ever lived after donning their spacesuits, the 27-year-old Gagarin, along with his backup 25-year-old Gerberman Titov, were transported with 11 other personnel in a bus to the launch pad. Garrin cracked some jokes along the ride. At the pad, he was greeted by chief designer himself, Korolev and other senior officials. Before taking an elevator up to the Vostok spacecraft On top of the R seven or Semyorka This was around oh 700 in the morning, just two hours before lunch. Plenty of time for some radio banter. Here are a few exchanges. cosmonaut, Paval, Popovich in the role of what we would call Capcom said this at, oh, 1400. Yuri. You're not getting bored there are you? If there were some music, I could stand it a little better. What would you wanna listen to if you were there in his place, in his space suit he had some time on his hands because technicians discovered the hatch would not close properly on the Vostok. They actually had to take off the hatch and then reattach it so that it would close properly. Would that make you feel confident here? at oh 909 Korolev rated radio Gagarin and said T plus 100. How do you feel? I feel fine. How are you? A number of officials and technicians were meticulously working to make sure everything was optimal. Everyone was stressed, but Gerrin was there in the most dangerous position of them all, and he basically said, how are y'all doing? Korolev could scrub the lunch and blast Gagarin to safety at any moment leading up to this exchange. I wanted to bring this up here. No one knew if this was going to be a one-way trip for Gagarin For one thing. To this day, there were 16 launches of the R seven rocket equipped with a third stage and six had failed. There were a hundred or so things that could have failed resulting in an explosion on the launchpad or right after lunch. Or a dangerous trajectory resulting in death. But I want you to consider this, even if everything worked and the Vostok was launched into orbit as planned, no one, I mean, no one knew if a human being could survive in orbit. You can run all the tests you want on Earth or test on animals that were launched in orbit. No one knew if a human heart could pump enough blood throughout the human body during a lunch in weightlessness for a long period of time, or the force of reentry. No human heart had performed its vital job under these conditions before, nor has the human brain. Also, some of the first artificial satellites of both the Soviets and the US detected radiation, particularly the Van Allen belt. Does that radiation remain at a. Stable level where there are higher levels of radiation, the further you go out, What effects does the radiation have on a human being? No one knew that's the risk Gagarin was facing on this day. Once again, his pulse was at a cool and calm 64 pulses per minute before launch. It happened at exactly oh 9 0 6 hours in 59.7 seconds. With a violent rumble of the Semyorka rocket engines His heart raced to 157 beats per minute. Ground personnel heard this over the com. Let's go. As Gagarin began to feel the upper thrust and the rocket began to rise, he said, we're off. His body was crushed back into the seat and he experienced trouble speaking after. He was experiencing G forces exceeding five Gs. All of the ground personnel, including Korolev held their breath and their heart seemed to skip a beat with apprehension. Gagarin described the launch. I felt, how their gigantic rocket trembled all over. And slowly, very slowly began to tear itself off the launching pad. The noise was no louder than one would expect to hear in a jet plane, but it had great range of musical tones and tremors that no composer could hope to score, and no musical instrument or human voice could ever reproduce. it is evident that Gagarin is a music lover. However, the music or noise produced from such large scale rockets like this, Semyorka, are loud enough to kill a person in close proximity. Korolev being the take control type that he was decided to man. The radio communication he radioed at oh 910. Everything is normal. How do you feel? Gagarin said, I see the earth, the G loads are increasing somewhat. I feel excellent. I'm in a good mood. Korolev, good boy. Excellent. Everything is going well. Gagarin. I see the clouds. The landing site. It's beautiful. What beauty? From many accounts of the first humans in space, they find it hard to put into words of how amazing the earth looks from orbit. He only had a small porthole to look through, though, I will attempt to explain what achieving orbit means here. Keep in mind, I studied history in college, not rocket science. I also do not try this at home. If you aim an AK 47 at a 45 degree angle in the air facing east and fired a shot, that bullet will travel up and back down in a ballistic path after gravity pulls it back down. Let's say that bullet reached a certain escape, velocity and height, the earth's gravity would still pull it back down. However, the bullet would miss the earth as it's pulled back down, meaning the bullet would continue to fall around the globe. This is what our satellites and space stations are doing right now. Depending on how high of an orbit it achieves, the bullet will eventually fall back to earth. Or it could be shot out into outer space never to return. Despite what Korolev of radio did. Gagarin, the launch was not going quite as planned. Gagarin was at a much higher orbit than anticipated. Gagarin reported that he felt excellent that G forces were not unfamiliar to him as he was in experienced mid 15 fighter pilot. However, weightlessness was a new sensation. Gagarin reported. I notice no psychological difficulties feeling of weightlessness with somewhat unfamiliar here, you feel as if you are hanging in a horizontal position in straps. You feel as if you are suspended., He was able to eat and drink his provisions and write in his log book as if Vostok tumbled around the earth. He said, I let the writing pad out of my hand and it floated together with a pencil in front of me. The Vostok spacecraft was set to perform its orbital mission entirely, automatically, technically. Gagarin was just along for the ride. As I said before, no one knew if Gagarin would black out or survive this. He could gain control of the Vostok if he wanted to, though in the event of an emergency or loss of communication with ground control, this would enable him to maneuver for reentry. There was a six digit code programmed on the Vostok logic clock. He knew the first three digits, the other three were written down in an envelope. The code to unlock the controls was 1, 2, 5. They had done it, Korolev Glushko, the thousands of others who contributed to this project to get Gagarin safely into space for a single orbit around the earth. Now came the hard part. Bringing him back home to earth in one piece. At 10, 2500 hours. The retro rocket. For reentry fired for 40 seconds to slow the Vostok down and into a downward trajectory. Gagarin reported as soon as the braking rocket shut off, there was a sharp jolt. And the craft began to rotate around its axis at a very high velocity. Everything was spinning around. Now I see Africa next to the horizon, then the sky. I had barely enough time to cover myself, to protect my eyes. From the sun's ray, I put my legs to the porthole. This part does not sound like. Fun does it. There was a malfunction when the larger instrument section of the craft performed separation from the spherical compartment that Gagarin occupied. He remained connected by some cables that failed to separate. Gagarin was aware of this, but he was also not worried. He typed VN on his telegraph key to transmit to the ground personnel. All is well. Separation finally occurred at 10 35 hours. Now here is Gagarin's account of the most dangerous part of space flight reentry. Suddenly a bright purple light appeared at the blind edges. The same purple light could be observed in the small opening at the right hand port hole. I felt oscillations of the spacecraft and burning of the coating. I don't know what caused the crackling sound. I felt the load factor reach about 10 Gs. There was a moment for about two or three seconds when the instrument readings became blurred, my vision became somewhat grayish. The Vostock was tumbling down at a very fast velocity. It was hot in the craft and it was spinning in all directions and the crackling sound, what a death-defying experience. He had to force himself to stay conscious'cause the Vostok was not designed to have a cosst ride it all the way down to the ground. Gagarin needed to bail out in contrast to the early NASA spacecraft, which were designed to land in the ocean and be recovered by the US Navy, this was determined by NASA to be the safest way to recover an astronaut and the space capsule. This method presented too many variables for the Soviet Union. Spreading their thin navy out was one concern. And they also did not want their space age technology to fall into the wrong hands. This was a solution that the OKB one Design Bureau came up with to safely recover a Cosmonaut and ensure that technology stayed secret. at 22,965 feet, the crafts parachutes deployed Hatch number one open and Gagarin was shot out. In the quiet morning hours in the town of Engles in the Saratov region of Russia, a mom and daughter took a casual and ordinary walk on the countryside. Suddenly the mother stopped in her tracks and the daughter ran away terrified. They were shocked by an other worldly sight. They saw from a distance, a strange figure approaching wearing an orange, bulky, full body suit with a white helmet. This strange figure began to wave his arms in the air and yell, I'm a friend. I'm Soviet. The woman helped him get to a phone to call in the recovery team and report in that he had made it back to Earth safely. The 27-year-old Yuriy Alekseyevich Gagarin, and now Immortalized cosmonaut, would be taken away for some tests and then congratulated by Nikita Khrushchev. More honors would come for the immortalized cosmonaut during a world tour. Also, Gagarin who stood at a height of five foot two inches tall would receive thousands of love letters from female fans from all over the world. As for Korolev, who organized this mission? He remained in anonymity. He and another recovery team arrived at the landing spot of the Vostok spacecraft. He put his hands on the hatchway and inspected the interior with a bemused faced, he relished a quiet victory to himself. This very Vostok Vostok one is on display at the RKK Energiya Museum near Moscow in Russia. I have not been there, but I'm sure it's a fascinating museum that is, if you're willing to travel there. This was the radio broadcast that announced this monumental flight to the greater public, The world's first satellite ship. Vostok with a human on board was launched into orbit about the earth from the Soviet Union, the pilot cosmonaut of the Spaceship satellite Vostok. Is a citizen of the union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Major of aviation, Yuriy Alekseyevich Gagarin at the, I believe this message was actually broadcast before Gagarin had landed back on Earth safely, which is a bold choice. Gagarin touched down at 10 55 this was just one hour and 48 minutes after lunch. He had orbited the earth, I want to put this into perspective here. Today in 2025, your typical airline flight from Chicago Midway International Airport, MDW, in Illinois to Hartsville Jackson International Airport, a TL in Atlanta, Georgia takes about one hour and 50 minutes. That's about 600 miles from one city to the next. The circumference of our world is 24,901 miles, The Semyorka Rocket or R seven Rocket launched Gagarin into one orbit around the earth. In the same amount of time as that commercial flight, he did this all the way back in 1961. This was a monumental leap. The Soviets had actually done it. Russia was a very secret of nation in a very unlikely place for such an accomplishment. Consider the past few decades prior to 1961. Think of the great purge under Stalin's orders and estimated 1 million people were deceptively charged for treason. They were either executed or sent to far off Siberian Gulag work camps where they were work to death, or the devastation in the aftermath of World War ii, it is estimated that around 8 million died in the military ranks, and that's in addition to the estimated 19 million civilian casualties. Those are staggering numbers, not to mention the destruction of infrastructure, homes and land. I believe German forces actually came to within 20 or so miles from Moscow at one point before the Red Army turned them back. This was shocking news for the rest of the world. How had this communist nation rebounded and led mankind into the ultimate frontier? This was something out of a Jules Verne HG Wells or Kurt Lasswitz novel, or a Buck Rogers comic book. Something out of those storied sci-fi movies from the 1950s drive-ins. Science fiction became Science Fact on this day, April 12th, 1961 For the Soviets, this was a realization of what Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskiy a Russian scientist who theorized and wrote about using a rocket to launch a man into space nearly 60 years prior. Tsiolkovskiy hoped one day that some determined and extraordinary men would achieve this very feat. In the future, I will cover the impact and legacy of this moment and profile the life of the first cosmonaut Yuriy Alekseyevich Gagarin. also, what was the reaction of the US President, NASA and the Mercury? Seven, particularly Alan Shepherd, who was slated for the first space launch. How close were we to being the first in space? How did we respond and equal the Soviet's proud achievements? Thank you so much for listening and remember there's always a light at the end of the runway.

Paula: 27:41

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